This invention relates in general to wireless communications, and more particularly, to a secure method of wirelessly communicating personal information to remote electronic devices.
Networked and stand alone electronic devices that contain or transmit confidential or sensitive information typically require some form of user authentication in order to protect the information from prying eyes and nefarious individuals. Some of the most common methods of authentication are: a secret username and/or password, a unique physical object (electronic key, secure id card, magnetic stripe card, smartcard, etc.), direct physical attributes (facial recognition, fingerprint scan, retinal scan, voice print, signature characteristics, etc.), or some combination of these techniques. The sheer number of approaches to solving this problem attests to the lack of an optimum solution. Some of these problems with each of these prior art methods are: passwords can be forgotten, passwords can be compromised if written down, physical objects can be lost or unavailable when needed, and readers capable of reading biological formats are expensive. The result of society""s continued proliferation of authentication systems is that many users are faced with the task of tracking multiple accounts and passwords. It is not at all unusual for an individual in the year 2001 to have 50-75 users names and/or passwords to track. Another problem is that a user may log on to a system such as a desktop computer and then walk away without locking or logging out, thus compromising the intended security. Clearly, a better way of protecting sensitive information is needed.